


Forget-me-not

by pawnofkings



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:08:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26340013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawnofkings/pseuds/pawnofkings
Summary: When Nathaniel wakes up in a hospital room, he's surrounded by unfamiliar people calling him by an unfamiliar name, and Mary is nowhere to be seen. He's set on playing along, on being Neil until he can get away - but Andrew Minyard, a man he supposedly knows, sees right through him.He offers Nathaniel a deal: to help him run, to give him the truth and protection, if Nathaniel promises not to run from him.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 15
Kudos: 130





	Forget-me-not

Nathaniel woke up in a hospital room, and his first thought was _fuck_ . His second was _where’s mom_ , and his third was _run, run, run_.

The ceiling, as stark a white as the sheets clutched between his fingers and the wall opposite him (on it, a painting of a sunset hung, as if to cheer up the irredeemably joyless place), didn’t hold his attention for long. To his right, something moved.

Nathaniel flew off the bed, trying to ignore the pain of the IV being ripped from beneath his skin. It was quickly replaced with an unnerving dizziness, and he swayed on his feet before catching himself against the wall.

On the other side of the bed stood a short, blond man, perhaps three or four inches shorter than Nathaniel, and he was staring at him with an indecipherable look in his eyes. “Neil.”

Nathaniel’s mind worked quickly. _Neil_ was a name he’d never taken for himself, but it wasn’t unfamiliar; he’d spent nights fantasizing about it, about a life free from his father’s clutches, thinking of his own name without his father’s contained within it. It seemed he’d given it to someone, then. “Yeah”, he mumbled, leaning more heavily against the wall. His mind screamed _threat_ , but there was only one person (and sometimes, not even her) who didn’t elicit that response. He couldn’t run, not until he knew what was going on, not before he got out of these _scrubs_ (and fuck, his scars, they must’ve _seen them_ , Mary was going to kill him), not until he knew what he was running from - what mess he’d made. “Where am I?”

“The hospital. Lie back down.”

Nathaniel caught himself shaking his head.

The blond man rolled his eyes. “Seems the crash didn’t knock the idiocy out of you. Bummer.”

“The crash?” he questioned. Finally, answers were within his reach. “What happened?”

“Lie down and I’ll tell you.”

Every fiber of Nathaniel’s being screamed in protest at the very thought of moving within reach of him, but there was nothing hostile about the man’s body language at that moment, nor anything violent in his eyes. He just looked tired. _How do I know this man?_ he couldn’t help but wonder, but no answers were forthcoming from his own mind, so he hoped he could get them from the other. Thus, he slowly moved back, gingerly climbing onto the bed and leaning back against fluffy pillows. “Now tell me.”

The man searched his face, gaze intent. Nathaniel tried not to show any sort of emotion, unsure of what was expected of him and unwilling to communicate incorrectly. “You crashed my car.” That just provoked so many more questions. How had Nathaniel gotten access to his car in the first place? Who _was_ he? “You and Kevin were going to night practice, and I didn’t feel like bringing you there.”

Kevin.

 _Kevin_.

 **_Kevin_ **.

Suddenly, Nathaniel recognised the man, and he lost his breath. _Andrew fucking Minyard_ . The goalkeeper who’d turned the Ravens down, turned down a meet-and-greet that Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day had _personally_ arranged in his honor, just to accept a contract with the Foxes. The theory was that he’d done so because the Foxes also offered contracts to his twin brother as well as his cousin, Aaron Minyard and Nicky Hemmick.

And the man knew _Kevin Day_. And… 

This was too much for his mind to process. He’d been going to night practice with Kevin Day? That didn’t make any fucking sense. He was headed for Seattle with his mom, having barely escaped his father’s men’s clutches yet again, last he knew. And now he was supposedly practicing with the second-best striker in Class I Exy, and they’d gotten into a car crash, in _Andrew Minyard’s_ car? The two weren’t even on the same team!

Minyard must’ve taken his shock for concern, because he rolled his eyes and loosed a sigh. “Kevin’s fine. Don’t focus on that right now.”

 _This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had_ , Nathaniel thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to say anything of the sort out loud, no matter how absurd and clearly sleep-induced this whole scenario clearly was. He felt compelled to go along with it, didn’t want to know what would happen if he didn’t.

It didn’t feel like a dream. Nathaniel wanted to believe it could be nothing but. But.

“Okay”, he said then, because it felt neutral and reasonable enough to say. Still, he needed more information than Minyard was offering him. “When was the crash?”

Minyard rolled his shoulders back, lowered himself back into the armchair. Good. Nathaniel hadn’t liked being looked down on in such a vulnerable position. “Three days ago. Tuesday night.”

Nathaniel distinctly remembered ‘three days ago’ being a Saturday, Tuesday being _today_. He remembered because his mother had made him pick up a newspaper along with the dental floss (not the one with mint), disinfectant, and gauze (as well as toothbrushes, toothpaste, and cleaning sponges in order to dilute the suspicious nature of the purchase, no matter the unnecessary expenses) in order to make sure that the shootout they’d just been in hadn’t made the news. At the top of the page, he’d read Tuesday. It’d been October. The thirteenth.

An uncomfortable feeling was climbing up his throat. “What date is it?” he asked.

Minyard raised an eyebrow, but answered the question readily enough. “August fourteenth.”

His vision blacked out, and he felt the distinct need to vomit. “I don’t feel good”, he mumbled, hoping Minyard would attribute his sudden pallor to his physical injuries.

Then he promptly passed out.  
  


»»————- ♡ ————-««  
  


When he woke up again, he expected his mother to be staring down at him when he opened his eyes. But the eyes he did see when he looked were green, and there was, strangely enough, a chess piece tattoo on Kevin Day’s left cheekbone. 

_Don’t freak out._

“Kevin”, he mumbled, because supposedly, he and Day knew each other. They’d been in the same crashing car, in any case.

“Jesus Christ, Neil”, Day breathed. “Are you okay?” It seemed _Neil_ was his name for now, then.

Another voice rang out to his right, where Minyard had been sitting before, opposite to Kevin. “Are you really asking him that, Kevin?” asked a blonde girl. There were purple-toned smudges underneath her eyes, similar to the green-and-yellow splotches on Kevin’s own face which he’d likely gained in the accident. “He was in a _car crash_ , for God’s sake.”

“So was I”, Kevin sniped. “In case you forgot.”

Nathaniel felt completely out of his depth, but did his best not to show it. The blonde girl turned to him, a concerning warmth in her gaze as it met his. “The doctors say you should be just fine, Neil. Wymack is working on checking you out right now.”

Wymack.

Coach Wymack of the Palmetto State University Foxes. It must be. Andrew Minyard, goalkeeper, Kevin Day, inexplicable presence, and - Reynolds. Maybe. Defensive dealer? He wasn’t sure, hadn’t followed the Foxes that closely - they weren’t the most impressive nor the most press-attracting team in Class I (at least not in a positive way).

But he was getting checked out. And Nathaniel wasn’t an idiot, he could put clues together. A bunch of Exy players in his hospital room, a collegiate Exy coach checking him out of the hospital. _What the hell did you get yourself into, Abram?_ His mother’s voice inside his mind was a near-physical presence. He could almost hear it echoing in the room as she screamed. _What the hell did you do?_

August fourteenth.

October thirteenth.

Huh.

He had to get out of here, and soon. It sounded like that would be the case, but after he left the building, he had to leave, leave, leave. Run. Find his mother, figure out what was going on, abandon _Neil_ and become someone else.

He must be in Palmetto. He had a few fake IDs in his binder, he’d choose one at random, find a Greyhound bus stop, get -

His binder.

“Where’re my things?” felt like a vague enough question to ask.

“We brought you some clothes if you wanna change?” Maybe-Reynolds offered. She picked a bag off the floor - not his duffel. _Fuck_.

“Yeah”, he whispered, almost incapable of choking down the panic. He couldn’t leave without his duffel, without his binder, without his IDs and contacts and money and _only way to stay alive, damnit_. Maybe his mother had it. That still begged the question, though.

He didn’t know how to ask this question correctly, but he tried anyway. “Has anyone else come to visit me?”

Kevin nodded. “Andrew’s barely left your side since you got here - he’s getting stuff from the cafeteria right now, he’ll be back soon - and the rest of the team has been camping out in the waiting room.”

“No one else?”

Maybe-Reynolds furrowed her brows. “Who else?”

Nathaniel searched his mind for a plausible lie. “I thought I saw someone…”

“In the room?” Kevin asked. Nathaniel nodded. “No, no one else has been here. Andrew wouldn’t have let them inside, believe me.”

Andrew Minyard, who apparently hadn’t left his hospital room since he got here, would’ve protected him when he couldn’t do it himself. That just begged the question of how the hell he knew the man. How he managed to get him on his side. Nathaniel didn’t delude himself into thinking they were friends - couldn’t imagine the man had many of those.

Wasn’t he supposed to be stuck in drug-induced mania, anyway? He’d seemed decidedly non-manic before.

His head was hurting with all the questions he couldn’t even guess at answers for.

“We’ll leave you to get changed, if you want”, Maybe-Reynolds offered, and Nathaniel accepted quickly. A chance to be alone sounded great. A chance to assess, calculate, and plan. 

A chance to sneak away, if he was lucky.

When the door closed behind them, Nathaniel pulled unfamiliar pieces from the bag they left behind. These weren’t his clothes; they looked form-fitting, luxurious black fabrics and heavy boots at the bottom. Well, he was a fan of those. 

Nathaniel moved across the room into the attached bathroom, quickly locating the mirror before he entered and making sure never to face it. He didn’t feel like seeing himself right now.

There were scars on his hands. On his forearms. Unfamiliar ones on his chest, on top of all the others. Fully healed, too, and he couldn’t even remember how he got them in the first place. 

Whoever made them did so months ago, and he didn’t even remember that. He’d lost so much time. 

Amnesia.

_Amnesia._

**_Amnesia_ ** **.**

“Fuck”, he cursed, leaning against the tiled wall to fight off the dizziness, the vignette of his vision. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

But he pulled the new clothes on instead of focusing too hard on it. Had to. That was the story of Nathaniel’s life: _have to, have to, have to_ . Couldn’t focus on the scars when he had to focus on moving, on not getting more of them. _Have to run, have to find mom, have to get_ away.

He’d only wanted to get an idea of his current disguise, when he’d slowly turned to face the mirror. Had only wanted to see if his dye job was holding up, if he looked different enough, _how fucking old he was_.

It’s all he’d wanted to know. But.

Auburn.

Blue.

 _Scarred cheeks_.

 _Father_.

He dropped everything he’d been holding on to, physically and mentally, and ran.

Past the bed, through the door that he slammed open - ignoring the confused shouts of what might be Day and Maybe-Reynolds - down the hallway, swerving from side to side to avoid patients and nurses and gurneys and crash carts. Slammed into the wall in order to avoid colliding with

 _Minyard_.

who reached out for him, but he picked himself back up, kept moving, found a stairwell and never stopped running, even as he stumbled and rolled down a flight of steps, breath knocked out of him as he smacked against the floor of the landing. When he looked up, he could see Minyard was following, two floors above him, moving in circles down the spiral staircase, and forced himself to get up though the pain seared every part of him.

He kept running, stumbling, struggling to continue forward, but breathing was too hard and just as he left the stairwell, entered a parking space, the blond man on his trail caught up to him.

“ _Neil_ ”, the man barked.

Nathaniel let himself fall to the ground, forced himself to focus, to recalculate. “Andrew”, he responded, still heaving.

The man fell to his knees beside him, raised a hand but didn’t touch him. “I thought you promised no more running, Neil.”

His mind blanked as he met the man’s gaze, seeing the emotion in them. _Why would I promise that?_

_What do you know?_

Minyard froze. His eyes widened, but only minutely. He shook his head, looked at Nathaniel even more intently. After several seconds, he said, “you’re not Neil.”

Nathaniel loosed a shaky breath, curled up on the ground, tried not to cry. This was too much. “Please, I just want to go.”

Minyard flinched. His eyes darted from side to side, looking at every part of Nathaniel, and Nathaniel would’ve moved if he thought he could. His ribs ached like a bitch.

“Nathaniel.”

It was Nathaniel’s turn to flinch. “How do you - I mean, who -”

“ _Nathaniel_ ”, he said more firmly.

“What?” Nathaniel asked shakily.

Minyard stared at him for several silent seconds. “Let’s make a deal.”

Nathaniel frowned, shook his head. “I can’t, I need to-”

“Listen to me, Nathaniel”, Minyard said. _Listen to me, Abram_ , his mother echoed in his head. _Nathaniel, fucking listen to me_. “You can’t run. You’ve got amnesia, for one. And you’re famous. There’s no way you’re gonna just run away and hide, you understand?”

Nathaniel _didn’t_. But he listened.

“You can’t run. I know you want to. But you have to _stay_.” Nathaniel shook his head, but Minyard plowed on. “Let’s make a deal.”

“For _what_?” Nathaniel hissed.

“I’ll explain everything to you if you stay.”

“I _can’t_.”

“You can, Nathaniel, that’s the thing.”

“How do you _know_ that name?”

“You told me.”

“No.” Inconceivable. It went against everything his mother had ever taught him.

“You did. And I’ll explain why if you stay.”

Nathaniel knew he didn’t have any options, couldn’t run from this because _this_ was so many, very confusing things, such a mess and fuck, if Kevin Day was around, who else was? Fuck, he really wanted to run, but if he ran now, would he run right into a trap? 

He wanted to scream.

“I’ll protect you”, Minyard said. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Why should I believe you?”

The asphalt was cool beneath his cheek. He didn’t think he could get up. Minyard stared almost unseeingly at him. “I never break a deal.”

“That would be reassuring if I fucking knew you”, he spat. Whatever. It’s not as if Minyard hadn’t figured out his amnesia by now, anyway.

Minyard’s entire body tensed. “Offer me something else then. In exchange. Something you think will keep me from betraying you.”

Nathaniel thought for several seconds. “I have money.” Surely, he still had that. No matter how fucking stupid _Neil_ must’ve been, _he_ must’ve been, to give his name to this man, he would rather break his own spine than willingly give up his binder, he knew. And those offshore accounts… They must be safe. They just had to be.

“Okay”, Minyard agreed. 

“A lot of money. I’ll give it to you in exchange for the truth. For protection. But if you betray me, I’ll slit your brother’s throat, so don't even think about it.”

Minyard considered him for several seconds, some incomprehensible look in his eye. Nathaniel hated that he couldn’t read him. “I believe you.”

“Good.” Nathaniel nodded. “And you can’t tell anyone.”

Minyard raised an eyebrow. “About?”

“Anything they don’t already know.”

“Your name is Neil Josten”, Andrew surrendered.

“Stick to that story.” Carefully, Nathaniel pushed himself up. “I want… To get away.” He didn’t want to go back up there, have to pretend to know what was going on, to have to go wherever they brought him.

“We can’t just leave.”

“Why not?” Nathaniel spat.

Minyard considered him for several seconds - felt like at least one minute - then nodded. “All right. Get in the car.”


End file.
